For many companies, the process of approving new suppliers (also referred to as supplier activation) is a manual and/or time consuming process. For example, some companies have a supplier manager who is responsible for approving new suppliers. The supplier manager may call the supplier getting approved, ask to be connected to the proper person, inform the person of the buying company's requirements for its suppliers to become approved, wait for the requested information to be provided, and review the information. Sometimes this takes many follow up phone calls on the part of the supplier manager. For large companies that review thousands of new suppliers every month, the amount of work required may correspondingly increase. It would be useful if new techniques associated with supplier activation were developed.